Intermittent Fasting, AI & Chinese Whispers

Today's question is on diet from a lad named Tanner:

"Hi Dave, my question today is...can a combat athlete train and fight with interval fasting? Or should he eat 3 meals instead? What should these meals look like, 4 hours apart or 5 hours? Are there any good sites on YouTube where you can watch this? By interval fasting I mean everything, so 16/8, 22/2, 20/4 etc..

Best wishes Tanner"

First of all, I dislike talking about nutrition, it is not my field of expertise.

If it was, I'd be making a hell of a lot more money selling Fat Loss plans than I do helping people move better, perform better and get out of pain.

However, I do understand combat athletes and love talking about them, even if it means I have to then chat food.

So here's a little experiment I have been running on myself, and now have several others involved in. And that is using your AI assistant as a food diary.

The subject of nutrition has gotten so politicised and almost turned into religion, it's hard to have a sensible conversation with people.

I think that because one of the things we can truly control is our food intake, and that the food we eat has such an immediate effect on our mood, emotions and energy levels that getting people to make real change is really tricky.

This is playing out in the real world with BMI's creeping up across the board.

So how do we get around nutritional dogma?

We lean into tech.

And what's the hottest tech of the moment?

It's AI

I call my Chat GPT "Kato" after Inspector Clueso's high kicking assistant in the Pink Panther movies. I also use Gemini, who I have named "Holly" after the ships computer in Red Dwarf.

If you haven't seen either the old Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers or the amazing SitCom that was Red Dwarf, well shame on you!!

But do write back letting me know what you call your pet AI of choice...

Now, here's the basics.

Tell the AI your age, height, weight and basics goals.

In Tanners case, it's combat sports.

What the AI will do is calculate your BMR, that is the basal metabolic rate, essentially the amount of energy your body will burn to remain as it is if you simply laid in bed all day.

If you also tell it your exercise and training plan as you do it, it'll give you your TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure.

You can also ask it for macro breakdowns and to let you know if you are in a calorie deficit or surplus.

That paragraph there is why I get bored learning and talking about nutrition, it has too many fancy terms and details!

So, my BMR is around 2600kcal

Add in training and my TDEE goes up as far as 3300kcal

Having that information is far more valuable than whether you eat:

Vegan

Carnivore

5:2

16/8

Mediterranean

Gluten Free

Or whatever else is cool at the moment.

So, I eat.

I put it into Kato.

Kate does the maths for me and spits out the numbers.

If by the end of a non training day I am in around the 2600 mark, I should be fuelled and good.

A little under, say 2-300 and I should be losing fat

Too far under and I'll soon run flat, get moody and the missus will make me sleep in the shed!

Too far over, and I may be getting fat!

Add in exercise and training, and now we have the calories we're burning in the session, plus the energy required to recover from and compensate to the demands of that training.

If I don't hit my 3300 on training days, I may not be recovering and over the week or month, I may notice myself burning out.

If I don't notice, then that's when trouble may arise and I get sick or injured, or the wife makes me sleep in the shed....

Now, here's the kicker.

I'm a 6'1 male, with a fair amount of muscle mass.

I have 3300 calories to get in, which gives me a lot of wiggle room with where those calories come from.

If you're a 5'5, 65kg fighter, aiming to to stay lean and light, while fuelling your training. You will have a lot less wiggle room.

You may have a BMR of around 1600kcal, and add in training, the TDEE will land you in the 3000 mark

So anytime you stop training, you run the risk of piling on the pounds. I talked about Paddy Pimblett in the last posture, he fits here again as he is known to get very fluffy between fights!

Now to bring all this back to the original question, intermittent fasting and combat sports, all you're really doing is shifting the meal opportunities into smaller windows.

This may suit you.

I hate training on a full stomach, so I like to separate my eating and training.

If you train early, it could well be the evening meal of the night before is more important than any breakfast you have.

There are some health benefits to intermittent fasting. And there are some risks.

Others way smarter than me have talked about this at length, look them up.

But if it suits you, if you feel good doing it, go for it. You will just have to eat larger meals when you do eat.

And that suits me.

Nutrition, a lot like training, does well when you find the methods that suit you the best.

And having your AI Assistant step in to track the calories and simply offer you numbers, means you can, in real time, make adjustments, observe how your feeling and try things out.

Between the AI's (not totally accurate but close enough) objective data and your subjective feeling, you'll dial in your diet pretty damn quickly with absolutely no need to follow any diet plan that is or has been in vogue ever.

Last thing before I go.

Most diet books start out well, I read the first two books on Paleo and the first edition of Eat Stop Eat decades ago.

Paleo got warped so badly since those first books, but it was a really good idea back at the start, it is essentially eat meat & 2 veg, just like Granny used to say!

Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pillon is what the 5/2 diet is based on, except Brad explains the science because he did the actual research!

So if you want to follow one of these plans, then by all means do so. But, go back to the source materiel.

As more people jump in, the materiel gets twisted as each author tries to find their unique angle to sell to their audience

That's how a medical intervention to treat seizures became the Atkins Diet, then once the Atkins controversies dies down, it resurfaced, this time under it's medical name, the Ketogenic Diet, or Keto for short.

And somehow, after Keto, we ended up with the Carnivore diet and people saying vegetables are bad for us!

It's fucking Chinese whispers!

Anyhow, that's all I have to say on the subject.

Now, what do you call your AI assistant?